Mr. Aurand

Website / Online Mechandising / SEO

The Online Property Tour - Is your website just a Billboard on the Information Superhighway?

By Douglas Aurand, President, Douglas Aurand & Associates

The call to the Sales Department comes in, "Hello, I'd like some information about having a wedding reception for 200 people at your hotel." Now you have to convince the bride-to-be your hotel is "thee" place to hold her reception, before she asks you to mail her one of your banquet menu/info packages and moves on calling her list of your competitors for their banquet menu/info packages.

Or the other sales call, "This is James Black with the Really Big Corporation, we're looking for a place to hold our annual convention." Again, you've got seconds, maybe minutes, to make him decide you're the only choice, or at least get on his Top 10 list.

Of course your Reservationists have this challenge every day, like trying to upsell a suite to an anniversary couple, "What's the difference between your $85 suite and your $125 suite?" was the question in the famous "Think Strawberries" speech by James Lavenson of the Plaza Hotel, New York, NY. Can your reservationists do better than the "Forty Dollars" answer Lavenson got in 1975?

There wouldn't be a problem if you could magically transport one of your brochures over the telephone or if they were visiting your property. Sales or Reservations would just take them on a Property Tour. You'd show the bride-to-be (mother of the bride and maid of honor in tow) the Ballroom. The Convention Planner would get to see the Ballroom, BreakOut Rooms and Registration Area. Reservations would get room keys and show both of the suites, pointing out your gourmet dining room on the way to the elevators. Did I forget to mention the couple are planning a romantic dinner, too?

The good news is, it is possible to send your brochure over phone lines and take a potential customer on a long distance property tour. All it takes is a well-planned website and a Virtual Tour.

With 72% of Home Internet Users and even more Business Internet Users having Broadband*, talking on the phone and surfing the 'Net at the same time is becoming common. Many home offices that still have Dial-Up, often have a phone line that the computer and fax machine share in addition to the "voice line." The Sales Staff and Reservationists just need to learn the phrase "Can you get on the Internet while we're on the phone?" If the answer is "yes," just guide them to your website; "If you'll just type www.OurGreatHotel.com in the Address Field of your web browser and press Enter, you'll be on our website."

At this point you'll learn why well designed hotel websites don't have a Flash Intro on the Home Page. Even on a high-speed connection, visitors have to wait for it to download and for their computer to open it. Not everybody has the latest Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading and a Gigabyte of RAM like your hi-tech website designer does. And there are a lot of Web users who still have the 256KB "slow" DSL Broadband that the Baby Bells and others offered as a less expensive alternative to higher-speed DSL or super-fast Cable TV connections. And there's that 28% that still have Dial-Up Connections (they hate those Flash Intros). At the very least you need a "Skip Intro" button. The best choice, lose the Flash Intro.

Design is what will help your Sales Staff and Reservationists get the bride-to-be, convention planner and anniversary couple to the right Virtual Scenes quickly. Your Main Navigation Bar needs a Virtual Tour button that links directly to the Virtual Tour Index Page. This is either a set of Thumbnail Images, one for each Interactive Image, or a layout of the hotel with icons where the scenes are located; lobby, ballroom, standard king room, restaurant, etc., linking to the Virtual Images. Your Sales Manager or Reservationist can point out the appropriate scene and with a click of their mouse your potential customer's Online Property Tour has begun.

Most website designers know one or two web technologies, and that's all they sell. Very few of them have experience in the hotel business. They'll design a website that's a great "Billboard on the Information Superhighway" but not a tool for your staff to use on a daily basis selling your hotel. The thought of designing a website to be used as a guided Online Property Tour just never occurred to them, they've never taken a potential customer on a "real" Property Tour.

Virtual Technology Selection is a big factor in making a guided Online Property Tour work. You don't want your Convention Planner needing to download and install viewer software. Virtual Images are primarily "played" one of three different ways with a growing fourth:

1. Programs like QuickTime have to be downloaded and installed. QuickTime is a over 3.5 megabytes and will takes much too long to install while you have a potential customer on the phone, assuming they will and can install it. Many company networks won't allow the user to download and install software without the Network Administrator's permission. Estimates are that 59.7% of Internet Users already have Quicktime installed**, but that means 40.3% don't

2. Viewer Plug-Ins are "add-ons" to your browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Safari, etc.) for using and viewing certain file types. They are much smaller than programs, only taking a few minutes to download and install. iPIX still has a Plug-In that can be installed from their website, but their Java Viewer has gotten so much better that the Plug-In is not really necessary anymore. Many web users resist cluttering up their computers with Plug-Ins they'll only use once and then there's that Network Administrator permission problem again.

3. Java Viewers load as part of the web page the Virtual Image is displayed on. They are only 35 to 75 kilobytes, so they load quickly each time a page with a Virtual Image is opened. Java is a memory-hog, but newer computers usually have more than enough RAM to handle them. Java must be "Enabled" in the viewer's web browser, but it would hard to surf the 'Net if it weren't. This is the easiest method for most potential customers and the one I recommend at this time.

4. Adobe Flash*** is beginning to be used for Virtual Images. They don't usually need any download and install of the Flash plug-in since it's nearly impossible to surf the Web without having Flash already in your computer. The drawback of many Flash-based Virtual Image Viewers I've seen is they don't correct the distortion of the Virtual Images like QuickTime, iPIX Plug-In and Java Viewers do. Horizontal lines, like a baseboard, are curved, instead of straight like they really look. It's a result of the "stitching" process that combines 2, 3 or more photos into one that's 360^0 around. I've only recently seen Virtual Tours using Flash that corrected the distortion, but the popularity of Flash will undoubtedly increase this over time

Virtual Tour photographers usually only know one imaging program. They're not familiar the advantages and disadvantages of competing virtual software and only sell what they know. Just like web designers. The idea that the hotel might use their virtual images as a guided Online Property Tour never occurred to them either. Also, if you're a franchise hotel it only makes sense to choose the same Virtual Tour Technology for your website that the main franchise website uses. That way you can get double use of the Virtual Tour. Note that better Virtual Tour photographers can produce Interactive Images in more than one technology. I'll be covering the various Virtual Imaging formats in a future column Formats & Franchises.

Another decision is how many Interactive Scenes to have in your Virtual Tour. Some hotels take a "budget approach" and only order 5 scenes, instead of all the scenes they could really use. They order a Virtual Image of the Ballroom that gets rented for a wedding reception once every other month, but not the Meeting Room that gets booked for training sessions and small meetings every week. This "small tour" choice is usually made by some one who only thinks of the hotel website as a "stand-alone" marketing tool, not as something to be used by the Sales Staff and Reservationists.

Also important in making your Virtual Tour work as an Online Property Tour is being able to get your potential customer to it quickly. If you are a franchise hotel that doesn't have it's own website yet, it is possible to get a potential customer to your hotel's pages on the franchise site quickly without going through the "search" process. Some franchise sites have "sub domain" name/addresses. Hilton.com provides its hotels with direct links like www.Albuquerque.Hilton.com. Another way is to reserve the appropriate domain name and have the Domain Registrar forward or re-direct the name to the first page for your hotel on the franchise site. The Residence Inn Albuquerque North web page on Marriot.com can be reached with www.Marriott.com/ABQRN or they could reserve www.ResidenceInnABQNorth.com and have it forward to the same page. I think the second choice would look a lot better printed on a business card, too. Domain name registration is only $15 to $35 a year.

You'll probably still need to send out banquet menus and information packets to potential customers even if you take them on an Online Property Tour, but while they're waiting the they always come back to take another Online Property Tour. The bride-to-be will show her groom, the convention planner will take their boss on a tour and one spouse will show the other where they're going for their anniversary. The other way to "send" marketing materials is to convert them to Adobe Acrobat .pdf files so they can be downloaded from your website or e-mailed as attachments. Just remember to size them to 8.5x11 inches for printing on regular paper on your potential customer's printer.

Like I said in my last column, nothing sells your hotel like "the hotel." The more you show it, the more you'll sell wedding receptions, annual business conventions and suites for anniversary weekends at rack rate. Using a Virtual Tour as part of your normal sales efforts, will quickly pay for the cost of the tour. Do the numbers, a 10 scene virtual tour is about $2,000, just divide that by your average room rate and you'll see how few extra room/nights you need to payback 100% of the cost of the tour?

• Nielsen/NetRatings WebSpeed report

** Adobe Flash Player Statistics on Adobe.com

*** Adobe bought Macromedia in 2005

Douglas Aurand has owned his multimedia business for 10 years. He produces virtual tours in real estate and hospitality. Mr. Aurand has imaged thousands of homes for sale and created many real estate virtual tours, posting them to Realtor.com and ColdwellBanker.com, among others. His website, VirtualAlbuquerque.com is a multimedia tour and a demonstration of how to use Virtual Tours as a showcase for his virtual golf course and ski tours. Mr. Aurand has produced media for Sheraton, Hilton, Marriott, Radisson, Wyndham, Residence Inn and several independent hotels and various B&Bs. Mr. Aurand can be contacted at (505) 857-2265 or DAurandAssoc@aol.com Extended Bio...

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